Storage arrays in data storage systems are controlled by storage processors that process data store and data access requests from host computers. Storage processors are computers that have software designed to handle input and output requests from other computers or electronic devices needing access to large memory capacity.
In a storage processor, a computer software program may not always perform exactly as intended, and there may be problems or glitches in the software that need to be corrected or fixed. Along these lines, consider handle leaks, which happen because the pool of available file handles gets exhausted when file handles are not properly returned to the pool after usage. The storage processor adds a file handle to a file to simplify handling and tracking of the file while it is in the storage processor. When the file is deleted from the storage processor, software in the storage processor is supposed to cause the storage processor to return the file handle to the pool for reassignment to another file. If the storage processor does not always return the file handle of a deleted file to the pool, then eventually the number of available file handles will be exhausted.
To determine where the issue is located in the software operation, a failure analyst will look at what the computer software program, known as a thread, was doing at the time of the failure. The data used by the failure analyst may be found in what is known as a memory dump file. A dump is essentially a snapshot of the thread status. A memory dump does not have to be a system crash, but may be used for data gathering.
The computer may generate a memory dump file before the program reboots, in order to provide some information for the failure analyst to use to identify where in the program code the fault maybe found and a root cause. Conventional software issue identification methods involve examining the memory dump file.